


Begin Again

by bideru



Series: Stormwind Secret Archives [8]
Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Forgiveness, M/M, Pining, Repairing Relationships, Scars, allusions to wrathion's traumatic birth, anduin is bad at dealing with grief, copious flashbacks, cupcake boi anduin, gratuitous references to previous fics, jihui, minus the almost dying part, pandaria is full of glorious memories, quiet references to vanshaw and varian/valeera, shaw and valeera don't trust wrathion as far as they can throw him, this author remembers that anduin is canonically disabled, what do you say when your ex-boyfriend shows up and announces he's going to save the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:28:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28975110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bideru/pseuds/bideru
Summary: By Royal Decree of the Kingdom of Stormwind and the Most Noble House of Wrynn:Be it known that I, Anduin Wrynn, King of Stormwind and High King of the Alliance, do hereby grant unto Wrathion, the Black Prince, a full and unconditional pardon.By my hand,His Royal Majesty,Anduin Llane WrynnOr, Wrathion returns to Stormwind, and Anduin must finally deal with all his feelings of anger, grief, and longing.
Relationships: Wrathion/Anduin Wrynn
Series: Stormwind Secret Archives [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984304
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	Begin Again

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you very much to [Liquid Lobotomy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiquidLobotomy/pseuds/LiquidLobotomy) for beta'ing and allowing me to bounce ideas off her.
> 
> This fic draws very heavily from the Anduin chapter of [Eat Pray Stab](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27184129/chapters/66501304), and also references the events of Beaten by the Rain and serves as the introduction to a separate but related future story.

Shaw supposed he should have known when the nondescript bracelet of hammered Pandaren gold appeared around the king's wrist. It hadn’t meant anything to him but it sure had to Ms Sanguinar, whose fel green eyes fixated on it the entire meeting and stiffened whenever the metal caught the light. He didn’t understand what she was so upset about until Wrathion shifted in his seat, and when Shaw’s gaze drifted to him he saw Wrathion too had noticed the bangle, and a smile, quickly suppressed, tugged at the corners of the dragon’s handsome mouth. 

_Ah,_ Shaw had thought, comprehension and apprehension warring for purchase in his mind. _The Black Prince has given him a gift._ Shaw remembered dragon gifts, and he itched to rip the bracelet from the king’s arm and examine it in detail. His suspicions as to the origins of the trinket were confirmed not long after, when the dragon left once more for Silithus, and the bracelet remained. 

“I didn’t know you wore jewelry, Your Majesty,” Shaw remarked, treading lightly should he find himself on thin ice, but he needn't have worried. Unlike his father, who’d reacted badly to the comment regarding a crimson silk hair tie, Anduin was not prone to suspicion or dispensed to anger. Rather, a rosy flush began to bloom over his pale cheeks, and he ducked his gaze as he was prone to do when caught in the act of something he shouldn’t be. 

“Oh!” The king’s hand flew to his wrist, clamping down upon the bangle as though by shielding it from view he was somehow erasing its questionable origins. “I don’t, really,” he said too quickly. “This was, uh… a gift from a friend.” 

A friend. The Black Prince had been _a friend_ when they were boys in Pandaria too. 

From what Shaw could see, the bangle was plain gold, unadorned with jewels or etchings, and nothing about it suggested any enchantment. Shaw prided himself on his ability to detect magical charms, but draconic magic was of a more subtle sort, and it shamed him to this day that he’d never noticed it on any of Katrana Prestor’s baubles. 

“It suits you,” was all he offered, neither an acceptance nor a rejection of what they both knew was so much more than a bracelet, and set about devising a plan to slip the trinket from His Majesty’s scarred wrist and spirit it away to SI:7 for analysis.

As it turned out, he didn’t have to, because Ms Sanguinar was waiting for him as he exited the room, porcelain features overcast. 

“You saw?”

“You’re in a mood,” he quipped, and indeed she was, because she hurtled past all her minor insults (which, for Valeera Sanguinar, were considered pleasantries) and straight to the point.

“I’ve already checked it,” she huffed, falling in step beside him. “When he first received it.”

“It’s not new?”

“No,” Valeera scoffed, spitting the word as if it had personally offended her. “He got it in Pandaria. From _him.”_

Shaw let this information digest as they rounded a corner, and he knew Valeera was angry from the deliberate scuff of her boots against the stone floor. The blood elf was soundless on most days, until her temper got the better of her.

Privately, he thought she and Varian had been perfectly suited to one another, their similarities few and subtle but glaringly obvious, if one knew where to look. 

“I took it to Kalec,” she muttered, “and he said it was clean. _Just a bracelet.”_ Her tone was bitter.

Well. If the Aspect of Magic could detect none then Shaw saw little point in conducting his own examination. He understood why it bothered Ms Sanguinar, and truth be told it bothered him as well. He’d thought Anduin had left all that business with Wrathion back in Pandaria ﹣ surely punching the dragon in the face when he’d first set foot in the keep all those months ago indicated that Anduin’s romantic feelings had finally abated, for which Shaw was relieved. Once, he’d done his best to protect the two princes from Varian’s volatile temper, wanting to give them the chance he had been denied to wade through the awkwardness of first love without judgment or interference. Once. 

And then Wrathion had assaulted the prince, freed a war criminal, violated the laws of time, and brought the Burning Legion to their door. Quite the dramatic breakup, if Shaw did say so himself, and fitting for a person like Wrathion. But Anduin hadn’t deserved such theatrics, and in the weeks following, Shaw’s heart broke for him. 

Staring at the parchment before him, Shaw smoothed his bristling mustache, frowning so deeply he feared his face would stick that way. No, if he were honest, really honest, it wasn’t the bangle that should have alerted him to rekindling of the relationship. He thought it went back much farther.

 _Valeera,_ Anduin had said absently, _I’d like you to sit in at the House of Nobles’ meeting today. I’ve repealed an order and want to know their thoughts, but I can’t afford to sit out today’s war council._

 _Of course,_ Ms Sanguinar had replied. _Which order?_

_The Prestor Edict._

The mention of it put Shaw’s teeth on edge, and a quick glance at Valeera revealed she’d felt the same. The late King Varian had passed the edict not long after the death of Onyxia, and at its core it all boiled down to the illegality of any member of the black dragonflight putting down so much as a single claw in all the lands controlled by the Crown of Stormwind. 

Legally, Shaw _knew_ the Black Prince could not enter Stormwind Keep with the edict intact, just as he _knew_ they all were powerless in the face of Magni, Speaker for Azeroth Herself, appointing the dragon as his representative to both Horde and Alliance. They could not demand Magni choose a _different_ representative, and he told himself, as Ms Sanguinar shook almost imperceptibly, that the king was just doing what he needed to in the face of war with the Old God N’Zoth. Abolishing the Prestor Edict was an act of politics, he told himself, and nothing more. 

Until it wasn’t. 

SI:7 knew everything that went on within Stormwind’s towering marble walls, and a great deal that happened outside them as well. It was not surprising to learn that the Black Prince wrote to the king as he worked with Magni and MOTHER in Silithus to repair the damage done by Sargeras’s flaming sword, and Shaw’s information told him that Orgrimmar received their share of correspondence as well. Updates as to the monitoring of the Titan worldsoul who slept fitfully within the planet’s core, and word on aqir activity and the ebb and flow of azerite and urgent reports on the resurgence of the sleeping city of Ny’alotha. 

What Orgrimmar most certainly did not receive were the personal anecdotes that accompanied each letter, the desert S.E.L.F.I.E.s and brief diatribes about the persistent boredom suffered by the dragon. He offered bits of advice from his brother Ebonhorn, the only other uncorrupted black dragon in existence, of suggestions of different herbs and salves to soothe the lingering pains Anduin carried from his deadly accident with the Bell, which Shaw knew Anduin considered if his medical reports were anything to go by. And Orgrimmar definitely did not receive Wrathion’s varying terms of endearment, the _my dear_ s and _darling_ s and _little lion_ s, which truth be told Anduin was called by a great many people but which meant something quite different when said by the Black Prince. 

Orgrimmar did not receive letters signed at the bottom with a great X, written at first in an unsure hand, only to grow broader over time, until at last the X stood larger than the first letter in the dragon’s name. 

And Shaw doubted that Wrathion received the same sorts of letters from Orgrimmar in kind. 

“I don’t like it, Shaw,” Valeera had groused to him, the first time Anduin had invited the dragon into his private apartments for dinner and jihui. It really had been only food and board games, and Wrathion had left before the twenty-second hour, and nothing in the subsequent report indicated that anything… _untoward_ had happened… But Shaw’d had his doubts. 

And now, glaring at the innocuous document before him, Shaw knew he’d been right. No matter how many times he reread it, the words remained the same. 

_BY ROYAL DECREE OF THE KINGDOM OF STORMWIND AND THE MOST NOBLE HOUSE OF WRYNN:_

_TO THE MARSHALLS OF THE STORMWIND GUARD, AND TO THOSE STATIONED IN THE MUNICIPALITIES OF DUSKWOOD, REDRIDGE, AND WESTFALL,_

_AND ALL OTHERS WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,_

_NOW THEREFORE BE IT KNOWN THAT I, ANDUIN LLANE WRYNN, KING OF STORMWIND AND HIGH KING OF THE ALLIANCE, IN CONSIDERATION OF THE PREMISES, DIVERS OTHER GOOD AND SUFFICIENT REASONS ME THEREUNTO MOVING, DO HEREBY GRANT UNTO_ **_WRATHION, THE BLACK PRINCE_** _, A FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON._

_IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I HAVE HEREUNTO SIGNED MY NAME AND CAUSED THE SEAL OF STORMWIND TO BE AFFIXED. DONE IN THE CAPITAL OF STORMWIND, THIS FEBRUARY 6TH IN THE YEAR THIRTY-NINE._

_BY MY HAND, SIGNED THIS SIXTH DAY OF FEBRUARY IN THE YEAR THIRTY-NINE_

_HIS ROYAL MAJESTY_

ANDUIN LLANE WRYNN

* * *

It began with a game of jihui, as it had before, back when they were just a broken boy teetering on the edge of death and a too curious whelp in over his head, all those years ago in Pandaria.

The game wasn’t some thinly-veiled invitation for the dragon to waltz unimpeded into his life and bed, as Valeera and Shaw seemed to assume. It wasn’t even necessarily an olive branch to his new advisor, although it became one in the end. No, Anduin’s only intent in the very beginning was to finally play a satisfying game against a skilled opponent. 

His father had never quite understood the point of jihui ﹣ _This game makes no sense!,_ his father would scoff, jabbing his finger impatiently at one of the stone pieces. _I overtook you! How is that my loss?_ ﹣ and while Valeera did, she was too competitive and impatient to play properly, hellbent on _beating_ him rather than _working together._ Both of them preferred fast-paced card games at any rate, and quickly grew bored over the long hours the game demanded, the careful planning required of each and every move and all those that came after it. Anduin had few friends his own age ﹣ Genn had pushed his daughter on the boy with such intensity over the years that Anduin and Tess now avoided each other at all costs, and it wasn’t as if he could pop over to Thunder Bluff when the mood struck him and take up a game with the only other person of passable skill. 

Shaw was admittedly decent, and he’d allowed Anduin to teach him several years ago, but Shaw rarely had the time and Anduin did not want to bother him, overworked as he was. He didn’t think something as trivial as a board game warranted pulling the spymaster from his many meetings and piles of reports during a war.

But _Wrathion…_ Wrathion was excellent at jihui. 

_“I’m not in the mood for stories,” Anduin grumbled, wincing as he tried_ ﹣ _and failed_ ﹣ _to scratch delicately at an itch wriggling along his jaw and instead punching himself in the face. He hated this. He hated the lack of control he had over his own body, and he hated Tong’s strengthening exercises, and even though they felt good he hated the twice daily healing sessions with the mistweavers, for the ache they left in his fractured bones at the end. He didn’t feel well and he couldn’t sleep and he didn’t want to listen to a brownnosing dragon reading him children’s tales in Pandaren with the sort of fluency Anduin could never hope to achieve._

_He sighed then, and that hurt too, Light and pain crackling over his expanding ribcage. The pain radiating through his shattered body wasn’t Wrathion’s fault, and whatever his father and Shaw said about the dragon, the Black Prince seemed genuinely very nice. Like he always did, Wrathion had somehow sensed his insomnia and come to sit with him despite the late hour, which was a very generous act indeed towards a boy he didn’t even really know, and Anduin was being quite rude to him._

_“No,” Wrathion said softly. “Perhaps tonight is not one for reading. I know just the thing.” And before Anduin could summon the energy to actually look at him, the dragon vaulted from the rickety chair at his bedside and out of the room, returning almost breathlessly hardly a heartbeat later. He must have run all the way to his own room and back._

_“Here!” he hissed triumphantly, a wooden board held in his clawed hands. A blonde brow arched into Anduin’s hairline as he took in the slight flush coloring the dragon’s mortal cheeks, the barest hint of color in the moonlight._

_“Wrathion,” he murmured, bemused. “How do you expect me to play a board game with you? I can’t move the pieces.” To prove his point, and with some difficulty, he flexed his fingers, and they twitched erratically, painful sparks shooting down the tendons of his hand._

_“The pieces are called stones, my dear,” Wrathion explained gently, his crimson eyes twinkling softly. “And I will move them for you.”_

_Flashes of games with his father and Valeera flickered through his mind. His father’s red, furious face as he lost, the stiff smack of cards as he threw them down. The unearned triumph in which Val basked after cheating her way to victory. Anduin was not enamored with games._

_But Wrathion was looking at him so earnestly…_

_“I don’t know how to play,” he protested weakly, and felt a gentle heat bloom in his chest that had nothing to do with the torn muscles clinging to his mangled skeleton as a fanged grin spread over the dragon’s face, a face alight with excitement and joy too immense for just a simple game._

_“I will teach you.” The promise kissed something deep within him as he breathed a single word_ ﹣ _“Okay.”_ ﹣ _and leaned heavily into the dragon, trusting Wrathion’s remarkably gentle hands to help him into a sitting position, the smells of smoke and strange spices filling his lungs as the dragon reached over him and arranged a column of pillows against his aching spine._

_“Comfortable?” he asked, eyes flitting worriedly over his rigid form, afraid he’d injured Anduin further in his haste._

_“As I’ll ever be,” the prince assured the dragon. Wrathion hesitated, as if it had only now occurred to him that he might have overstepped some boundary that in truth he’d long ago violated, and it wasn’t until Anduin threw out a clumsy hand in his direction that the Black Prince seemed to remember himself, and Anduin allowed himself to relax in as much as he was able as his friend explained the rules in his rich, luxurious voice._

Anduin could move his own pieces now, and an emotion he refused to name swelled in his chest as he observed the dragon, lost in the game, clawed hand hovering thoughtfully over a grouping of blue stones. 

“Where would you like to go, my king?” 

_Anywhere,_ thought Anduin, _so long as it’s with you._

There was a terrifying moment in which he thought he’d spoken the illicit dream out loud, where Wrathion’s amused gaze met his own, lips coming together in his characteristic smirk, and Anduin prayed for the floor to open beneath them and swallow him whole.

 _One day,_ promised a black dragon whelp, several years ago on the shores of the Thundering Isle, _when I’m a little older, I shall, if asked politely, take you on my back and ferry you to fascinating places, where we will have adventures that will age your father ten years in one night._

“My king?” Wrathion repeated, and it was his tone that assured Anduin nothing had happened, that his traitorous tongue had not betrayed him. It was a careful sort of tone, devoid of the teasing and snark to which Anduin was accustomed, the accent of someone who examined each word in minute detail before allowing them to pass cautiously into the open air. An audible representation of walking on thin ice, afraid that at any moment he might find he’d misstepped only to plunge helplessly into the freezing water below. 

Anduin swallowed. “Please,” and he was proud of the steadiness in his voice, despite the thundering of his heart, “just Anduin is fine. And I can still move the stones myself.” He wiggled his fingers and did not miss the way the dragon’s eyes dropped to them. Did Wrathion remember all those years ago, when such dexterity was beyond him? Was he thinking of all the times he’d covered Anduin’s shaking hand with his own, helping him press the stone clutched between his trembling fingertips firmly to the board? Wrathion had been so patient back then, always meeting the prince’s frustration with a compassionate _It’s alright, Anduin_ when he inevitably had to retrieve stones Anduin’s quavering fingers scattered by accident. _It’s alright,_ he’d soothe in the face of Anduin’s consternation, setting each runaway piece without ceremony back in its place and sparing him further embarrassment by not making a fuss. 

Wrathion drew his eyes away. “Yes,” he murmured, returning to the board. “Of course.”

* * *

“Do you know what’s missing from our games, my dear Anduin?”

It took a great deal of effort not to roll his eyes. He could think of a great many things Wrathion would miss, and several that he did as well. 

They’d been doing this for several months, this meeting for dinner and jihui. Every few weeks, though on no true set schedule, Wrathion would swoop in on full, wine-dark wings, his obsidian scales glistening in the afternoon sun, to report on the goings on in Silithus. He would regale them all with what he promised were grand breakthroughs, splaying before them neatly penned accounts of various Horde and Alliance champions as he narrated a whole lot of nonsense as to his own exploits without pausing for breath. Anduin didn’t know when he’d stopped being annoyed by it, when he noticed the twinkle in Wrathion’s eye and looked forward to his passion. It reminded him of simpler times, of a small tavern in the misty mountains. 

“What’s that?” he asked, sliding one of his blue stones two squares forward to rest diagonally across from a trio of Wrathion’s red ones. His set had come with blue and black, but Wrathion had always played red in Pandaria and it had been no trouble to commission an additional set painted what the pandaren called imperial red. He’d seen the comment on the dragon’s tongue, the one he bit back and swallowed as quickly as the heavens open in the storm, and nearly asked the dragon to voice it anyway regardless of the consequences. The hesitance with which they tiptoed around each other now was maddening, and so very unlike him.

Though, after all they’d been through, Anduin supposed it was a miracle they still spoke at all. 

“Sweet potatoes.”

The king felt his mind fuzz, and he blinked in confusion. “Sweet potatoes?”

There was that grin again, the one that made his stomach somersault. “Sweet potatoes,” Wrathion affirmed. “Don’t you remember Tong’s sweet potatoes?”

“Ohhh.” The sound filtered low in recognition as Anduin returned Wrathion’s grin with one of his own. “I do,” he said quietly. “Whenever we would play Tong would make us sweet potatoes.” Piping hot and wrapped in a swath of edible rice paper, Tong had always presented them as though they were a rare treat in which he was indulging the boys. Sometimes they were roasted, flavored gently with smoke and fire, and other times boiled in a sauce heavy with ancient Pandaren spices, but always were they meant to be held with two hands and eaten in small, savored bites, and Anduin had relished one of the few foods he could devour without much assistance. 

There came a quiet _click_ as one of Wrathion’s red stones leapfrogged a pair of his blue. “We should send for sweet potatoes,” he declared. “I’ll have Left fetch some from Little Pandaria.”

Anduin studied the board, trying to decide how best to proceed. “Don’t trouble her,” he told the dragon with a wave of his hand. “I have a pandaren cook.” He frowned as a thought came to him then. “Wait. What time is it?”

Wrathion screwed up his face in contemplation. “Dinner was… two hours ago, I believe.”

“Oh.” Cold disappointment seized him, stronger perhaps than the situation really warranted. “It’s probably too late to bother him.” 

He was conscious after a moment of a small chuckle ﹣ Wrathion was laughing. “Oh, my dear, _dear_ Anduin. Please don’t ever change.” 

“What?”

The dragon clapped his hand over his own mouth, shoulders shaking with mirth. He still wore the elaborate onyx ring he’d worn in Pandaria, which no longer shared the spotlight with a myriad of others but was displayed prominently on all on its own. It winked in the lamplight as Anduin stared, until the dragon’s dark curls rustled as Wrathion ran that same hand through them and the onyx melted from view.

“It’s nothing,” Wrathion assured him, twin spots of pink dotting his cheeks. “You just… you’re exactly the same as I remember.” Naked affection erupted in the space between them with all the intensity of a thunderclap, and Anduin pictured Wrathion then, reaching across the board to take Anduin’s hands in his own, eyes closing as he leaned in with parted lips﹣

He couldn’t do this again. With all the willpower Anduin possessed he pushed the image ﹣ the painful, glorious image of Wrathion in his arms and Wrathion’s lips on his ﹣ from his mind.

“You’re nothing like I remember,” he said quietly, and ignored the twinge of emotion within as Wrathion’s laughter died. 

“Well.” The dragon didn’t seem to know, all of a sudden, what to do with his hands. It wasn’t his turn and he had no drink and he settled in the end for laying them atop his thighs, nails skittering over the fabric of his primly-tailored trousers. “Well.” 

Anduin wished he hadn’t spoken. He made himself look at the jihui board, the spread of blue and red stones, and tried to remember what they’d been doing a few moments ago. 

After several excruciating minutes and a truly horrible advance that did nothing to actually progress the game, Wrathion spoke. His voice was very small. 

“Is that a bad thing?” 

Was it a bad thing? The Wrathion Anduin remembered was compelling and impassioned and more than a little petty. He didn’t often consider how his own actions affected others, whether they be eating the last pot sticker or freeing a war criminal. He was dramatic, to an overly obnoxious degree, and scheming, and convinced of his own righteousness. 

And he was still like that, Anduin thought, somewhere beneath the surface. He saw it in the council room in every fervent speech, and saw it as he touched down in the courtyard with an elaborate, unnecessary flourish of leather wings, and he saw it still, carefully contained, sitting across from him tonight. 

But Wrathion had never put such effort into conversation before either. Had never minded provoking Anduin in the past, or baiting him with his insufferable sass. He was _trying,_ Anduin knew, and the gesture was appreciated. He didn’t assume they would pick right up where they’d left off, as the Wrathion of old would. He’d grown up in the interim, and Anduin was only sorry he hadn’t been there to see it.

“No. Not at all.”

* * *

“What’s that?” Anduin asked, apropos of nothing. They weren’t playing jihui today. Winter had come to Stormwind, bringing with it freezing rains and heavy fogs and the kiss of pain to every inch of his nervous system. Living in this ruined body wasn’t easy on the best of days but winter pushed him to limits he hadn’t toed since he’d been bedridden in Pandaria. Some days, Anduin wasn’t sure he’d truly healed at all. 

They’d fallen into their usual routine despite the weather. In fact, Anduin could admit to himself if no one else that the only reason he’d dragged himself out of bed today was the announcement from his steward, as the man placed a tray of unappetizing food at his bedside, that Wrathion had returned from Kalimdor. The dragon made his report to the council, Anduin had been told, and nothing had changed, but he still insisted on regaling Anduin with all the unnecessary details when Anduin summoned him to his rooms.

Which he was regretting, Anduin thought dully, as his knee gave a particularly insistent throb. He’d been very careful, in his opinion, to meet with Wrathion only in his sitting room. To never give the impression that it was not enough, even if in his dreams more often than not the plush couch of the room gave way to his extravagant four poster bed. They did not touch, and though their letters had become more… _familiar,_ such talk did not extend to their cozy games of jihui. Where Wrathion might pen _It is very lonely tonight in this dreary desert, my dear. I quite miss your company and eagerly await the moment we meet again,_ and Anduin might reply _I am sure you want for more than my company, you ridiculous reptile, and I would be doing us both a disservice if I told you the false truth that it is only your company I desire as well,_ such statements were never uttered within the walls of Stormwind Keep, and Anduin found himself, in his spare moments, wishing they were.

“Pardon?” Wrathion sat a bit closer than was proper, his welcome body heat washing over Anduin’s aching left side, but Anduin did not want him to move away, and it was not only out of fear of the resulting chill. 

His hand rose of its own accord and Anduin watched as if it belonged to someone else as it arced through the air and stopped just short of Wrathion’s thick curly hair, which could not quite conceal the dark mark peeking out from the collar of his finely embroidered tunic. The dragon watched him out of the corner of his eye, and to Anduin’s horror, he _flinched._ The king hastily withdrew, heart rabbiting in his chest.

Did Wrathion think he was going to strike him?

Hot shame flooded his cheeks as the memory came unbidden. _“Anduin! It’s been so long!”_ The rage that had curled hot in his chest, exploding in a woosh of air as his fist connected with Wrathion’s sharp, bearded jaw, and the look of resigned acceptance that flashed in the dragon’s crimson eyes. 

“I…” His tongue suddenly felt too large for his mouth and he struggled to articulate himself. “I’ve never… seen that one before,” he finished lamely, forcing himself not to look away. He wanted to rip the afghan from his lap and disappear beneath it.

It seemed Wrathion was struggling as well to bring himself to heel, which did not bring Anduin the comfort it should. It was several moments before he answered, and when he did, it was in a removed, detached manner.

“Surely you recall," Wrathion intoned, "that I carry a number of scars on my body." And Anduin did remember the staggering number of solid, angry scars seared into the dragon's skin, but the thin black line snaking down the side of his neck wasn't one of them.

_“Anduin.” Wrathion placed a gentle hand on the prince’s scarred arm, but he did not try and pull the arm from Anduin’s chest, where the prince clutched at the neckline of his sleep shirt, ashamed at the naked disfigured skin hiding beneath. “Are you alright?” His eyes searched Anduin’s face, concern settling between his elegant, dark eyebrows. “We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to.”_

_“It’s not…” And Anduin wanted very much to do this, wanted to pull Wrathion against him without the barrier of their clothes and feel the heat of his skin. Run his fingers through the fine dark patch of chest hair and fall asleep to the soft lullaby of the dragon’s beating heart. “It’s not that.”_

_A thumb stroked along his arm, not tracing the fault lines as Anduin always did but simply caressing over them, as if they didn’t exist at all. Patience was not something the Black Prince possessed in abundance but he always had some for Anduin, and he did not press the boy to speak. Having grown up with Varian for a father, it was something Anduin greatly appreciated._

_“I just…” he began, and then faltered. Cleared his throat. Tried again. “I don’t…_ **_look_ ** _… I mean…” He nodded uselessly at the arm across his chest, the sleeve pushed up the elbow and showcasing several raised, pink scars. Velen had told him most would fade with time, once he’d fully healed, but Anduin couldn’t overcome his loathing of them. His father wore his scars, earned long ago against vicious gladiators and fierce warriors, as a badge of honor, and they gave him an air of intimidation, accented his aura of imposing authority. Anduin’s scars didn’t make him feel intimidating or imposing. He looked at the disjointed wreckage of his body and felt only weakness._

_A gentle press of warm lips to his temple brought Anduin out of the screaming hurricane of self-criticism. “You look perfect to me,” the dragon hummed, and confusion bloomed across his face as the prince shook his head._

_“I have too many scars,” he mumbled, and the dragon softened._

_“Oh, my dear Anduin.” Another brush of Wrathion’s lips, Anduin’s hair fluttering in the exhale. “Is that all? Oh...” The glow of his irises faded as he closed his eyes. “I have scars too.”_

_“Like mine?” And Anduin winced at the sharpness of his tone, but he wasn’t in the mood to be teased._

_“Yes.”_

_The word, shocking in its simplicity, stood starkly between them in the dark, and after a moment Wrathion pulled away. The dragon sat up, tugging some of the blankets with him as he did, and did not look at him. The prince understood then that he’d touched a nerve, that Wrathion in his naïvety expected them to shed their clothes and say nothing about what lay beneath, and had realized quite quickly that that was not how things worked._

_All his embarrassment drained away, replaced with distress on Wrathion’s behalf, and the hand holding his shirt closed reached out to meet the long sleeve of Wrathion’s own. He always wore so many layers… Anduin didn’t think now that it was “fashion,” as the Black Prince once claimed._

_What had happened to him?_

_“Wrathion…”_

_A soft smile pulled at the dragon’s mouth, and after a moment he laid back down, purposeful in his movements so as not to agitate Anduin’s injuries. They’d mastered this, sleeping together as two boys, but Wrathion was always more careful in his human form, always conscious that he was larger and weighed more, and could hurt the prince much more easily than he could as a whelp._

_“It’s late,” he whispered, curling into Anduin’s side. “We can do that another night.”_

_Their clothes stayed on, and Wrathion spoke no more of scars, but he did confide in Anduin not long after about the terrible experiments he’d been subjected to by the red dragonflight in their quest to produce a perfect, uncorrupted black dragon. He tried, very hard, to remain detached from the horrors of his birth, but the facade melted quickly as Anduin enveloped him in a shocked, tender embrace, and Wrathion wept long into the night._

Guilt struck him hard and fast. He had no right to question Wrathion, not in this. Perhaps his memory was slipping. They’d been separated for a number of years, after all…

“I don’t understand why you’ve insisted on sitting out here,” the dragon said abruptly. “You’ve looked terribly uncomfortable ever since sitting down.”

And Anduin _was_ terribly uncomfortable. His back screamed in protest as he shifted minutely, and his bad leg ﹣ the _lucky_ leg, for it had been snapped neatly instead of shattered in the catastrophe that was the Bell ﹣ radiated a pain so strong it was almost visible, a bleak aura of red agony oscillating in time to his pulse. 

“I wanted to see you.”

The words were out before he could stop them, a sentiment uttered by a broken boy smashing through the years of turmoil and heartache to present itself once again in the here and now before the dragon he still lo﹣

 _Stop it,_ Anduin chastised himself, willing himself not to blush. _Stop it._ His chest felt tight; he couldn’t breathe. _Stupid, stupid!_ He heard the hitch in Wrathion’s breath; he’d caught the dragon by surprise, but fondness the king still held didn’t seem… _unwelcome…_

_Keep it together, Anduin!_

There was a dip in the cushion as Wrathion leaned in, just a touch. Just enough. “I’m flattered,” he confessed. “But you shouldn’t trouble yourself on my account.”

“It’s no trouble,” Anduin protested, even though it was. 

“Anduin…” And Wrathion looked as if he would say something ﹣ for just a moment the wide-eyed whelp he’d been ﹣ before swallowing it back, and saying something else. “Do they still give you jademoon elixir?” he asked softly.

Anduin’s eyes widened. _How does he… remember that?_

“N-no,” he stammered. “I take wyrmtail syrup, usually, or…” The name of the royal physician’s prescribed tincture eluded him momentarily. “Something blue…” It came in a tiny, triangular vial. “Prayerblossom!”

The cushions shifted again. “You should take some,” Wrathion said kindly. “I’ll get it for you.”

“No.” It was automatic, and easy, to reach for him. To wrap his hand around the solid line of Wrathion’s arm and lean into his warmth. “It’s fine. It… prayerblossom makes me sleepy.” 

He didn’t want to sleep through Wrathion’s visit. 

“Just. Stay here,” and Anduin felt his face grow hot again, “with me. It’s fine.” 

He couldn’t look at Wrathion. His back was spasming in this position but he couldn’t break away, couldn’t twist into a more comfortable way of sitting. He was touching Wrathion again, for the first time in years, and he never wanted to stop. 

“Alright.” And then, “Would it help… may I hold you?”

That was… 

Wrathion was a dragon, molded of the earth and kissed by fire. A living heat pad, should he choose to be, and very often he had on those chilly mountain nights, when Anduin’s shattered bones were made of ice and drumming an agonizing rhythm into his very soul. Respectful of his injuries ﹣ the broken shoulder, too stubborn to heal properly, and his so-called lucky leg ﹣ Wrathion had many times folded the prince into the shelter of his arms, fashioning himself into a living blanket and providing better medicine than any Anduin had ever taken before.

 _My dear, you seem very cold,_ he’d murmur, breath hot in the prince’s ear. _Might I be of some assistance?_

Anduin could think of nothing he wanted more. Not trusting himself to speak, to let loose all his traitorous thoughts and unfettered emotions, he nodded, just once. Just enough. Shifted his center of gravity, and inhaled the intoxicating aroma of fire and spice as he settled against the fine mageweave of Wrathion’s tunic. 

_I shouldn’t be doing this._

Valeera’s horrified face flashed in his mind. What would she say if she were to walk in right now?

As Wrathion’s arm curled around him, a balm on his fractured body and a shield against the winter’s damp chill, Anduin found he didn’t care, right then, what Valeera thought. Or Shaw, or even Genn. He didn’t care about Wrathion’s supposed intentions. All he’d wanted, since coming home from Pandaria, was to be right here, and finally, he was.

* * *

The anniversary was upon them. A somber time, one for reflection and grief. Anduin stood by the window, gazing out into his city. His beautiful, glowing city, shining in the darkness with thousands of lights. One for every soul lost to the war against the Legion. 

The candle stood quietly on the sill, as tall and proud as the white marble cathedral in the distance. Away from the crowds of people, the afternoon sermon and gesture of ceremony that was praying before the empty grave at Lion’s Rest, Anduin was finally able to remove his armor, to let his face fall. No longer steeling himself against the onslaught of sentiments, the king struck the match and added his light ﹣ his grief ﹣ to all the rest. 

_I miss you._ The ache was back, the horrible screaming maw deep in his chest, the one he tried so hard to smother with reports and meetings and books, with the Light and Pandaren food and letters to ridiculous dragons deep in the Silithi desert. _I miss you so much._ If he let his thoughts wander too far, if he allowed himself to wallow too long in his memories, he would give in to the anguish. He would break like he had under the Bell, and this time no Light or mistweavers would save him. 

“Anduin?”

He hadn’t heard her knock. He supposed she must have grown concerned at his silence and let herself in, because Valeera always knocked. Never entered without permission. He forced the smile back on his face and turned to greet her.

“Hey Val. I thought you were in Zandalar.”

“I had some things I needed to take care of here.” She was dressed in silks for the hot Zandalari weather, a fur-lined cloak her only protection against the Stormwindian winter. He’d asked her, several months ago, to find out what she could about Baine, and why the tauren wasn’t responding to any of his letters. _Please, Val,_ he’d begged. _I’m worried about him._ And Valeera had gone without protest, infiltrating the city of gold not as an assassin but as a sort of covert spy, able to blend in as Shaw and his agents could not. He’d been so relieved when the steward handed him the letter dabbed with black wax and stamped with a familiar orcish seal, and learned that, as far as Val could ascertain, his friend was unharmed.

He didn’t think she’d come to talk about Baine. 

“I’m going to make a cup of tea,” she said offhandedly. “Would you like one?”

He didn’t, not really, but he appreciated the thought behind it. “Yeah. Thank you.” 

There was familiarity in this, in sitting with Val over tea. She put honey in it, which he liked, and gave him the good pillow for his leg. She pulled the afghan from the back of the couch, tucked her legs beneath it, and gave him half. 

She wasn’t supposed to be here, but she’d come back to Stormwind… for him. On the anniversary of his father’s death. She wouldn’t let him face it alone. 

Valeera Sanguinar wasn’t his mother, but sometimes he wished she was. From the time he was eight years old she’d been there for him ﹣ reluctantly, at first, but never once turning him away, from the very moment he’d toddled up to her and beamed, _Hello, miss! I’m Anduin. What are you doing?_ She asked with concern about the scrapes he’d endured in his training, and comforted him after bad dreams, and offered an impartial, listening ear after every argument with his father. Because of Valeera, his father had relented and allowed him to study the Light, and because of Valeera his father had kept his diatribes about Wrathion to a minimum when they returned from Pandaria. She understood him, the way no one else ever had, his moods and motivations; celebrated his good days and did not fault him for the bad. She’d cried, the first time he limped unassisted to greet her in the tavern, after the accident with the Bell.

She loved him, and he loved her in return.

“The city looks beautiful,” she was saying now. “Was that your doing?”

“Yes. I thought… I didn’t want things to be as gloomy as they were last year.” 

Valeera nodded into her tea. “You did well.”

The praise settled over him, warmer than any hearth fire, and he basked in its glow. “Thanks,” he murmured sheepishly. 

Val and his father had been very close friends. She was probably hurting as badly as he was. But what could he say to her without opening the lid on his own suffering?

“Your father would have liked them too,” she offered, unprompted. “Do you remember the one after the business with… after he came back?” After the riots, and after Onyxia died. After Valeera came to the city. “He told me they’re called luminaria.”

“What do you call them in Thalassian?” Anduin didn’t know why his brain went immediately to that. Maybe because it was the only reply he could give that wasn’t about his father. 

“Onos,” came the answer, in the gentle lilt reserved only for him. “Silvermoon sets up an onos every year for the lives lost to the Scourge.”

Anduin had learned about the Scourge. Stormwind had suffered, but it had been the kingdoms of Lordaeron and Quel’Thalas which had been utterly decimated by the undead plague. Humans and elves blamed each other in the aftermath, and it fractured what was left of their alliance. It was the reason Valeera was barely tolerated in Stormwind, why it had taken a king’s order not once but twice to bring her peace within the city. 

“Have you ever seen it?”

“Mm, several times.” Val undertook a pilgrimage every year to Quel’Thalas, to bask in the light of the Sunwell that was the lifeblood of her people. She’d explained to him long ago that such a journey was an ancient rite sacred to her people, that not even his father could have stopped her. It only made sense that she would have visited Silvermoon at least once… “I light a candle for my family every year.”

“Oh, I… I didn’t know…” Anduin took a hasty gulp of tea. “Are they… did any of them survive?”

 _You must never ask an elf about their family,_ Valeera told him not long after they’d met. _It’s very rude._ And then her gaze had softened, and she’d added, _But you may ask anything of me._ Anduin didn’t often take advantage of her invitation to question, a gift she extended to no one else, and he felt guilt about doing it now.

A strand of long hair tumbled over the elf’s shoulder as she shook her head. “My father,” she said after a moment, rolling her tongue against her teeth. “But he died shortly after.” 

“Val, I’m sorry.”

Another soft headshake. “Don’t be,” she said dismissively, in a tone Anduin knew well. The one that suggested she’d like to get off the subject. “He wasn’t a good man.”

He swallowed the part of him that wished to apologize ﹣ for her father, and her loss, and for dredging the memories to the surface in the first place. Valeera didn’t like pointless apologies, or when he felt badly over things he couldn’t control. It wasn’t his fault her family was dead, she’d tell him, so he shouldn’t apologize as if it was.

“Not like yours,” she added, watching him out of the corner of her eye. “I’ve never known a man to love his son the way your father loved you.”

There was a lump in his throat, and when Anduin tried to swallow it down he only succeeded in choking on his tea. He tried to pretend his eyes weren’t watering, but soon his coughing gave way to stifled sobs. 

“I miss him,” he blubbered. “I… I really…” He nearly spilled the cup as he dove for her, as he reached for her the way he had all his life, and without disentangling them, Valeera gently set their unwanted drinks aside before gathering him in her arms. 

“I know,” she soothed, and her voice trembled. She stroked soft circles down his back, and Anduin felt eight years old again, wailing over yet another roadblock in his quest to connect, somehow, with the unknowable man that had been his father. “It’s alright. I know. I understand.”

He couldn’t be certain in the moment, he was shaking too hard, but later Anduin would realize that Valeera missed his father just as much as he did, and that she had been crying too.

* * *

It took longer than it should have for Anduin to admit to himself that he was failing ﹣ rather miserably ﹣ in keeping Wrathion at a distance. To make matters worse, there was no grand moment of clarity as he realized every mistake he’d made since the Black Prince sauntered back into his life. Anduin was painfully conscious of each misstep as he took them, from inviting Wrathion to his private apartments for that first game of jihui to his informality with their forms of address, to the back and forth flirting in their letters. He should have stopped Wrathion’s silly endearments the moment they’d been penned, should have received him in the throne room at every visit, and never, ever should have let himself get caught up in what their relationship used to be. He should have been more firm with himself, and not given the dragon any indication of the feelings he’d done his best to bury since leaving Pandaria. 

Because there were feelings. There had always been feelings, even as Anduin shoved Wrathion’s many gifts deep in the back of his wardrobe, as he did his best to ignore his racing heart at the mentions of dragon sightings in Draenor and Blackrock Mountain, and as he woke with fresh tears clinging to his lashes over some dreamy memory. For as long as they’d known each other, there had been feelings, and nothing Anduin did chased them away. He’d settled, for a long time, for packing them tightly away in a far off corner of his mind, and accepted that there would always be days where he would open the lid and sadly examine each precious, flimsy memory, wondering where in the world it had all gone wrong. 

_“Anduin,” Valeera said, pulling her chair close and laying a hand on his arm. “Why are you doing this?”_

_While Shaw could see the necessity of abolishing the Prestor Edict in the wake of the Black Prince’s new role, Anduin thought, Valeera could not_ ﹣ _and did not want to. As alert as she’d been that morning on the Timeless Isle, her eyes roved over him, searching for any small hint that Wrathion was once again attempting to seduce the young king._

_“He’s Magni’s representative,” Anduin said, with more calm than he’d had in Pandaria on the subject of the last black dragon. “He has to be able to come and go as necessary to perform his duties, without being detained in the Stockade.”_

_Shaw said nothing, continued his meticulous filing of council notes and new reports, but Valeera’s mouth flattened into a thin line. Anduin wondered briefly if they’d planned to gang up on him like this, if Shaw’s presence was meant to serve as a calming buffer to Val’s more emotional side, the way hers always had to his father’s._

_Sometimes Anduin saw quite a lot of his father in the way Valeera loved him, and it always made his heart ache._

_Her voice dropped as she asked, “What’s this really about?”_

Anduin wasn’t able to admit it then ﹣ honestly hardly dared admit it now ﹣ but as the months dragged on, he acknowledged that a relationship with the dragon was possible now that the edict was gone, should he choose to pursue one. 

And _oh,_ he wanted to. As they sat across from one another, sneaking glances when they thought the other wasn’t looking, Anduin wanted nothing more than to sweep the jihui board aside and fall into the dragon’s arms the same way he had countless times before, before the trial and Gul’dan and his father’s death. Like nothing had gone wrong, like they’d emerged from Pandaria unscathed. Intact. He wanted to nurture this strange, awkward, pulse-quickening connection between them, the pull he’d felt the moment Wrathion walked into his throne room, arms spread wide and grinning from ear to ear. Wanted the thrill of touching his dark satiny skin again, not in another blow but with soft caresses the way lovers did, curling up tight beneath the sheets and feeling the brush of warm lips against the tender skin behind his ear, the hot breath tickling through the strands of his tousled golden hair and long, spindly fingers dancing lines of fire in his most intimate places. 

It was a long time before Anduin realized that Wrathion was speaking to him, the smirk he remembered so fondly tugging at the corners of his mouth, and Anduin fought through the mental assault of every kiss he had ever laid there to say, “I’m sorry, Wrathion. What was the question?”

The smirk grew in obnoxious smugness as a laugh tumbled from the dragon’s lips. “There wasn’t one,” he admitted, “but I had hoped you were paying attention to the discussion, my dear. It is considerably rude to ignore one’s guest, and what I’ve been saying is _terribly_ important.”

Anduin allowed himself a good natured roll of the eyes. “You think everything you say is important.”

“Because it is.” And the way Wrathion spoke, so sure and with finality, said that he really, truly did. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Anduin teased.

“Ah, that I may be, but you﹣” The dragon cut himself off abruptly, heat flooding his cheeks, and Anduin felt his heartbeat quicken through his whole body, mind buzzing with the words left unsaid.

_Ridiculous I may be, but you love me._

How many times had Anduin heard that? How many times had Wrathion taken his silly jabs and turned them on their head with those four small words? _But you love me._

Yes. He did. He didn’t think he’d ever stopped, and that was what made all this ﹣ the meetings, the letters, the dinners and jihui and just plain _talking_ ﹣ so very difficult. He wished right then for the ground to split, to fall into a great, yawning crevasse far, far away from the blushing dragon before him. To go back to that time before Wrathion soared back into his life, when his mind was so full of Kul Tiran unrest and Horde attacks and demonic invasions that there was simply no time to think about those days in Pandaria, and the boy who’d made them all bearable. 

He didn’t think it would change things, in the end. Whether he’d come back or stayed away, or Anduin kissed other boys or married like Genn wanted him to. Wrathion had always been it for him. 

“It’s your move.” The words were quiet, and muttered behind the dragon’s hand as he coughed a polite, embarrassed sort of cough, and Anduin didn’t care about the game anymore. Not when he’d seen, plain as the scars striping his own skin, a glimpse of the _real_ Wrathion. The one he remembered from years ago, the soft, gooey center at the heart of one vain, overconfident, ridiculous reptile. 

“Yes.” His voice sounded like it’d come from someone else, and he moved a stone without really seeing it, just to get it out of the way. “I guess it is.”

So he _hadn’t_ been wrong, Anduin thought, as affirmation settled gently over his broken heart like a balm. He _hadn’t_ been imagining it. The silly pet names, the secret looks, the very careful choosing of all his words… Wrathion still _felt_ for him. Anduin thought back to the dragon’s last visit, his readiness ﹣ his _need_ ﹣ to care for the ailing king and the offer of his own embrace to soothe the angry remnants of the long ago accident that had nearly claimed his life… Wrathion hadn’t done those things to be _nice,_ as Anduin had tried convincing himself. His heart hadn’t stuttered in his magnificent chest at Anduin’s touch, and his eyes didn’t flash anxiously, because he was simply _being Wrathion._ He had been nervous, so desperately nervous, over the possibility of ruining the fragile salvage of their relationship, while being subject to the same wants and desires as Anduin himself, unable to stop himself from doing what he always had on those days Anduin’s body betrayed him. 

Wrathion wasn’t just _being Wrathion_ that day, and he wasn’t _being Wrathion_ any of the other days either. He was trying so very, very hard, to respect the boundaries Anduin had set in the very beginning. 

Sky blue eyes never left the Black Prince as the dragon bent over the board, staring determinedly at pieces whose positions no longer made any sense. “Anduin,” he murmured, after many long, agonising minutes. “I feel I owe you an apology.” He spoke to the jihui board, not daring a glance at the king. “I never meant to cause you pain.”

Time stopped.

“I’m sorry, for what happened at the trial.” The dragon touched a red stone with one fingertip but did not move it. “I had… many delusions of grandeur back then. I thought what I was doing was right, and the rest of you too simple-minded to understand.” The stone scraped lightly across the polished wood. “And because of that, many people ﹣ innocent people ﹣ lost their lives. None of my plans bore the fruit I’d hoped they would.” There was a soft _click_ ing sound, as the stone slid beside its neighbors. “I wasn’t on the battlefield,” Wrathion continued, withdrawing his hand, “but it _is_ my fault your father’s dead. I know how you loved him, and I’m so sorry for the part I played in taking him away from you.”

All the air left Anduin’s lungs. He supposed, with the anniversary of the Burning Legion’s defeat only days old, that the subject would have to be broached eventually, but… he hadn’t expected…

 _“It isn’t_ **_my_ ** _fault,” Wrathion said airily, waving the subject away. “I wasn’t there on the Broken Shore. I certainly didn’t kill your father.”_

That had been less than a year ago, and Anduin had become so upset and angry he’d sent the dragon away. 

But this… Wrathion’s entire body sagged with the weight of regret, and Anduin could see the genuineness in the slope of his shoulders, the downturn of his mouth. His hand shook as he placed it back into his lap, and his gaze never strayed from the board, as if afraid of what he’d find if he looked up. 

It must have taken a lot for someone as selfish as the Black Prince to not only realize he’d done wrong but _admit_ to it, with such sincerity that Anduin felt himself pulled by some unknown force in his direction, and only just stopped himself from reaching out. 

_“You have a nasty habit of taking a person’s words at face value,” Genn growled, bushy brows coming together in a stern furrow. “Your father worried that you are too trusting, too ready to believe the best in people even when there is no best to be seen.”_

_Anduin did his best to ignore the bite in the old worgen’s words. That was just how Genn talked, and he’d made peace with it long ago. “Is it so wrong to believe that everyone has goodness inside them?” he hummed._

_“Yes! People hurt each other and say horrible things, and one day someone will use your childish naïvety against you!”_

That was something Genn would say if he were here now, Anduin thought. _All dragons are liars,_ he’d growled the night Wrathion made his return. _They involve themselves in mortal affairs to sow chaos and create discord._

Maybe that had been true once, but Anduin didn’t think it was now. Not here. Not about Wrathion. 

“Thank you.” His throat felt tight, the words difficult to push out around the lump forming there. “That… that means a lot to me, thank you.” He wasn’t sure if it was the mention of his father or the apology for his death that affected him so. Probably a bit of both, honestly.

Something slotted into place then, some puzzle piece of Anduin’s soul he’d long thought forgotten. As though with his confession Wrathion had reached for it beneath the couch, dusted it off, and presented it with a quiet remorse. No expectations of gratitude, no self-absorbed fanfare. It nestled snugly in his chest and suddenly Anduin understood what had been holding him back. Holding _them_ back. The resurgence of the missing piece suddenly illuminated all the rest in startling relief, and Anduin saw clearly the bigger, completed picture that was their shattered bond. 

Stones clicked and scraped as Anduin took his turn, his muscles moving more from memory than any continued desire to play. It was as if the air between them, once a thick and noxious fog, had suddenly cleared, breathable again. 

“I shouldn’t have hit you,” the king confessed after a pregnant pause, voice barely audible in the scream of silence. 

“I would say I deserved it.”

“You did.” Anduin felt himself relax, felt all the anger and forced hatred he’d held bleed out of him. He hadn’t felt so at peace in years. “But I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry too.”

A red stone clacked into a trio of blue as Wrathion made his play, and when he peeked through his lashes he saw the kind, imperturbable face of the boy he’d fallen for in Pandaria. “There’s no need to apologize,” he murmured, voice thick. “I seem to remember telling you more than once that you do that far too often for someone who never does anything wrong.” 

Wrathion had committed many wrongs in his life, but losing his heart to Anduin Wrynn wasn’t one of them. 

* * *

The war against N’Zoth was grueling, with daily calls for reinforcements and reports of deaths. For several worrying months it seemed victory was impossible against a deity that made its home inside the cloying doubts of man. They only had so many soldiers, fresh out of the war against both Azshara and the Horde, and their Lightforged forces ﹣ the backbone of the 7th Legion in Kul Tiras ﹣ suffered horribly inside the Sleeping City, the Light within them reacting violently to the omnipresent Void. Their battalion of void elves didn’t fare much better, leading to tense and often volatile arguments in the war room between Turalyon and Magister Umbric, and Anduin tried his best to keep the peace where he could. It helped some that Genn had a particularly explosive shout that could silence even the loudest of men.

And then came the most wonderful, most blessed news, delivered by a bloodied and out of breath scout, half dead on her feet and barely able to summon the force needed to produce sound: N’Zoth had been vanquished, slaughtered by a squadron of mercenaries for hire and the Black Prince himself, and Anduin’s heart lived in his throat until news of the dragon’s condition reached him with any certainty.

Wrathion had survived the assault, and at the risk of his own life delivered the blow that felled the Old God.

Anduin experienced the strangest feeling of deja vu as the great doors to the throne room opened, and in strode the Black Prince. He had been injured, holding himself awkwardly to spare himself what appeared to be a serious pain, and winced as he swept into a shallow bow that was quite unlike him. 

“Your Majesty,” Wrathion proclaimed, banishing the exhaustion from his voice, “I have come to announce the demise of the Old God N’Zoth and the descending of peace upon Azeroth once more.”

He didn’t know what he expected. Certainly not for the king to rise from the dais as he had nearly one year ago, and not for Anduin to walk toward him with arms outstretched. A line of gold glinted around his wrist in the hazy afternoon light. He saw Valeera Sanguinar’s eyes widen, heard the sharp intake of breath from the spymaster, before his own eyes shut as Anduin’s arms closed around him, and when the king spoke, he did so in a whisper, for Wrathion’s ears only. 

“I prayed for you, my friend, and I’m relieved you are safe, and happy that you’ve returned.”

The throne room fell away as the dragon was swaddled in Anduin’s forgiveness, skin tingling gently where it was pressed against the king’s own, an analgesic to Wrathion’s fragmented heart so warm he felt it all the way down to his toes. He had to be dreaming, still trapped in the Sleeping City, and at any moment he would wake up alone and far from the undeserved warmth radiating off the Light-blessed king, his old friend, his first and only love. 

“Thank you,” Anduin said, “for all you’ve done in service of Light’s green Azeroth, and please﹣” and he pulled away, just a little, just enough to raise one hand between them “﹣allow me to heal you.”

A small chuckle escaped before Wrathion could catch it. “Nonsense, Your Majesty. You don’t have to.”

“No,” Anduin agreed, “but I would like to, if you’ll let me.” Murmuring a soft prayer under his breath, the king called forth the Light and with careful precision, knit the skin beneath the silken tunic back together. 

On that day, the day N’Zoth died, High King Anduin Wrynn absolved Wrathion, the Black Prince, of all his previous sins, and allowed the mending of their friendship to begin. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you VERY much to [silriven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silriven/pseuds/silriven) for allowing me to quote them in the last line, which is taken from their amazing fic [The Temptation of Anduin Wrynn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24025753/chapters/57805579). That line, and the scene it came from, inspired my entire N'Zoth-era Wranduin headcanon, and this fic would not exist without it. The Prestor Edict is also from the same fic.


End file.
